College leaders set aside gripes for Obama meeting

Obama's call to rate colleges on quality and value is troubling to many in higher education. | AP Photo

And at least some participants said the White House requirement that they make a commitment in order to participate in the summit was the kick they needed to bring long-simmering plans to fruition.

Higher education has long been a focus of Obama’s domestic agenda. Early in his first term, he set a lofty goal: By 2020, the United States would again have the world’s highest proportion of college graduates. The U.S. had slipped to 12th, trailing not just the East Asian education powerhouses but Russia and Belgium in the proportion of 25-to-34-year-olds with college degrees.

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The administration poured new money into Pell grants and successfully shielded the program for low-income students from congressional budget cuts, reaping praise from colleges and universities.

As student debt soared, making college more affordable — and ensuring that a degree is worth the money — became a paramount objective. The 2020 graduation goal, meanwhile, looks increasingly out of reach. The United States has now slipped to 14th — behind Luxembourg — in the proportion of 25-to-34-year-olds with degrees.

The president fired a warning shot in the 2012 State of the Union address, telling colleges they were “on notice: If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.”

“In their minds, a more vigorous or activist regulatory approach is sort of the other side of the coin from the increased resources that they supported,” said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.

Colleges, already smarting over a package of new regulations from the Education Department on everything from distance education to defining a “credit hour,” protested. It’s become a common refrain: The administration tries to impose one-size-fits-all policy solutions on colleges with varying missions. (For-profit colleges, an early target of new regulations, never had a honeymoon period with the administration.)

“Higher ed really doesn’t like the idea of federal intervention in higher ed,” said Brandon Busteed, who leads education initiatives at Gallup. “They want more funding support, but they want less oversight.”

The conflicts came to a head in August, when Obama proposed the Education Department rate colleges. The system is still in development. It would grade colleges based on how many low-income students they admit, graduation rates, average debt and salaries, among other factors.

The reaction was immediate — and negative. College presidents warned of unintended consequences and said factors like salary are a poor way to measure the quality of an education.

“You don’t address higher education in this country by slapping a rating system on it,” Napolitano said.

The Education Department and White House have heard the complaints and continue to invite feedback. But they are continuing at full speed and criticizing higher education lobbyists who have tried to oppose it.

And the negative reaction didn’t come as a surprise.

“These reforms won’t be popular with everybody, especially those who are making out just fine under the current system,” Obama said when he first proposed the plan. “But my main concern is not with those institutions; my main concern is the students those institutions are there to serve.”